The debate over who owns Rockall is heating up further as Iceland reaffirms its claim over the waters around the island.
Icelandic officials are now staking a claim to the much-disputed Atlantic area which lies 200miles off the coast of Donegal.
“The Hatton-Rockall area is part of the Icelandic continental shelf,” a spokesperson for the Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs told RTE News.
“Icelandic fishing vessels periodically catch blue whiting from common stocks near Rockall. However, no Icelandic vessels are in the area at this time of year,” said the spokesperson.
The Ministry statement added that Iceland has not given their consent for the overlapping claims to Rockall to be disputed through the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The issue of Rockall was brought to the fore in May when Scotland threatened legal action on Irish trawlers fishing in the 12-mile zone around the uninhabited island.
However, the Irish government does not accept the Scottish sovereign claim to the land. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar maintained that the fishing grounds are EU waters and that Irish trawlers have a right to fish there under the Common Fisheries Policy.
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